


Sing Me Back to You

by onyourleft084



Series: Time after Time [3]
Category: Tangled (2010)
Genre: All You Need is Love- The Beatles, F/M, Memory, Past life, Psychometry, Rapunzel sings, Reincarnation AU, Soulmates, The Beatles - Freeform, Vietnam War AU, remembering, student rally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3658656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onyourleft084/pseuds/onyourleft084
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reincarnation AU.</p><p>"You were my dream," Eugene mumbles. He meant to say 'you were in my dream,' but his voice slurs slightly and lands on a sentence that somehow tastes familiar and honest on his lips. Rapunzel gives a slight gasp.</p><p>"And you...you were mine."</p><p>Set in New York City, 1963.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me Back to You

**Author's Note:**

> Playing around with scenarios a bit by dumping Eugene and Rapunzel in the midst of a Vietnam War protest. Should be a bit of a treat for anyone who's seen and loved Across the Universe.
> 
> This is the third in a series. A couple things I'll be stating to get straight:
> 
> In-story, of course, the reincarnated characters don't have the same names as their past lives, but I will still continue to refer to them as such because...really, I can't think of modern AU names, and they end up remember their old ones anyway, so there.
> 
> The memories of their past lives can only be triggered by direct physical contact of any kind, a kind of psychometry if you will.

The crowd of people is overwhelming, the sidewalks choking with clamorous young people brandishing enormous signs like shields, hurling words like spears.

"No more war! Bring our boys home!" They march through town, showing no intention of stopping. Even if the cops did arrive, they'd just do it again the next week, and the next, until every soldier shipped to Vietnam was sent back home and the war declared over. Well, that was the goal anyway.

"One, two, three, four!" chants Eugene, alongside his fellow protesters. He raises a fist and jabs at the air with conviction. " _We don't want your fucking war!_ "

He's a troublemaker, a young radical, and at the heart of revolution is exactly where he feels most right. Where Eugene feels like his rebellious energy is being channeled into something that actually matters. He's got a brother and cousins in the army, and for all he knows they're shooting down other boys' brothers in the middle of a godforsaken jungle somewhere. And troublemaker though he was, Eugene hated the idea of killing. Of dying.

"Bring our boys home!" shouts a slender, blonde girl to his left. She's carrying a sign that says 'all you need is love' in stark, aggressive black letters. But the 'O' in 'love' is replaced by a heart shape, formed by multiple intricate bright red swirls. It's clearly a work of art.

Eugene doesn't have enough time to admire it-- or her, with her big green fierce eyes-- before the cops arrive. They block the road and force the march to dissipate and break formation. The protesters only yell louder.

They expected this.

"Stand down! Stand down!" bellows a stocky officer, as more people continue to charge forward.

They're jostling on all sides, threatening to swallow Eugene up. Protesters and policemen clash, bodies pushing against each other, a war zone in the name of peace. Eugene lends his bulky strength to the wall of people, ready to start a riot if it came to that. They press against the wall of cops.

Then shit really hits the fan when a canister's tossed into the crowd, hissing loudly.

"Tear gas!" screams a man on Eugene's right, and the protesters scatter, charging forward past the police or running out of the line of fire. Before he knows what he's doing, Eugene grabs the blonde girl by the shoulders and shoves her out of the way.

"Move!" he yells.

"I can take care of myself!" she screeches back.

She's wearing a sleeveless top and his skin makes contact with hers, and for a second everything blazes white. He's thinking maybe the cops used a stun flare or something like that, but the blaze of white is suddenly replaced by an overwhelming cascade of fleeting visions that Eugene finds both bizarre and strangely familiar--

The force of the crowd, the wave of those visions, knocks him off his feet. He hears the blonde girl gasp and scream as his face makes contact with the pavement, jolting him back into reality. Around them, the gas swirls and thickens...Eugene gags. He can't see. Tears stream down his face, blurring his vision.

The blonde girl. He's seen her before somewhere.

 

\---  
Eugene's body goes limp, but his mind continues to spark like a firecracker. He finds himself drifting through-- no, being dragged through, more visions. He gets the weirdest sense of déjà vu. He's addressed by a different name than he was born with, but it feels more right than anything he's ever been called. And that girl-- she's there, too. She's everything to him. She glows.

Literally.

They save each others' lives. Or something like that.

Rapunzel. He knows now. Heck, Eugene knows _everything_. Rapunzel the missing princess, the human sunbeam, the love of his past life.

She sings in those visions, and it's her voice that brings him back to her. That brings him back, easing him out of unconsciousness and into reality.

Eugene blinks. He's in an emergency ward, on a hospital bed. And she's there. He hears her before he can see her.

 _"There's nothing you can make that can't be made,_  
_No one you save that can't be saved,_  
 _Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time,_  
 _It's easy_  
 _All you need is love,_  
 _All you need is love_  
 _All you need is love, love_  
 _Love is all_  
 _You need..."_

Rapunzel-- because it's her, dammit, he can't think of her in any other way-- looks up, her voice dropping, as Eugene stirs and looks at her, forces himself to look at her. _She's really here. We're really together. Is this even happening--?_

"You were my dream," Eugene mumbles. He meant to say _you were in my dream,_ but his voice slurs slightly and lands on a sentence that somehow tastes familiar and honest on his lips.

Rapunzel gives a slight gasp.

"And you...you were mine."

Her voice is barely a whisper, but a reverent and solemn one. They slot right into his heart as if they've always been meant for him. In this life, and in his last.

"What happened?"

"You got knocked out. Ambulances came. I went with you." She swallows."I don't know why, but I-- I know you. When you touched me, I knew."

"Did you see them?" Eugene murmurs. "All those visions? The tower, the lanterns..."

Her breath catches. She nods.

"Are we going crazy?" His eyes, now fully open, are round and sober.

"I don't think these are dreams," Rapunzel says carefully. "I think they were memories."

Eugene doesn't know what to say. In the back of his mind a scene is playing, and he's dancing around a medieval city with this blonde girl holding his hands and everything is a swirl of lavender and gold. Deep down in his gut something tells him it's definitely happened before.

"I can remember you singing," he whispers. "I remember you singing me back to life."

She manages a nod, a small smile. "I can't remember what I was singing," she says, with conviction. "But I want to. I need to remember-- everything that we were, everything that happened to us. It just felt good and right and perfect...so much better than this fucking war." Her eyes meet his. "Don't you?"

He doesn't ever remember being able to say no to those big green eyes, and he doesn't think he can now.

Eugene reaches for her hand. "Yes."

Their fingers entwine, and the world blazes white once again.

 

 


End file.
